Defying the Censorship: People’s History Taught in More Classrooms

No wonder the right is upset.

More than 9,000 teachers signed up to access people’s history lessons in 2024, bringing our full registration at the Zinn Education Project to close to 170,000 teachers, with representation from every state.

A recent American Historical Association study of teaching U.S. history in secondary schools found that more than a quarter of the teachers surveyed use Zinn Education Project resources. That percentage is comparable to other organizations in their report with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, while ours is less than a million. Our wide reach is thanks to word of mouth, individual donors, and countless teachers’ dedication to bringing people’s history to their students.

Through our lessons, young people are learning to read the news with a critical eye, to assess current events with a historical lens, and to recognize red-baiting and fear-mongering tactics.

In 2024, we:

• Developed and offered a popular new lesson on the roots of violence in Palestine, helping to fill the gap in classroom resources on the region

• Spoke out about the importance of teaching about Palestine, in contrast to the silence from most major education organizations and challenged the repression from many school districts

• Organized the 4th annual national day of action to protest the wave of attacks on teaching truthfully — with dozens of groups, including the National Education Association, Teach Rock, GLSEN, the American Library Association, and more

• Partnered with the independent newsroom Prism Reports on a series of stories to shine a light on people’s history educators

• Offered monthly Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online classes with leading scholars, including Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Heather McGhee, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Kellie Carter Jackson, and more

• Hosted 75 new Teaching for Black Lives teacher study groups, bringing our total to more than 400 in 45 states

• Selected the second cohort of the people’s history teacher leadership fellowship named for education activists C. J. Prentiss and Michael Charney

• Distributed more than 14,000 free books on people’s history to schools across the country, including states where authorities outlaw teaching history truthfully

• Offered teacher workshops on Reconstruction, climate justice, the Civil Rights Movement, Palestine, and labor history

• and more

The right wants to force educators to teach only conservative “patriotic” narratives.

In this perilous time, please

donate to defend teachers’ right to teach people’s history.

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